Messrs. Cleveland & Lyon were among the first great traders in the village. Their trade was large, extending to different parts in Pennsylvania, as they kept a stock of general merchandise, and “Bob” Lyon would buy almost anything you could name. People came from Spring, Pa., at dawn of day; others passing in wagons from Conneautville, and others from more distant points twenty to thirty-five miles to Bob Lyons to trade. This man Lyon was a live man from head to foot, with electric tongue, an active brain, a double-geared movement an active hands behind his counter, affording a rare treat to the countryman to behold his genial face.

Messrs. Hyde & Sargent kept tavern at Conneaut. No hotels in those days, all taverns and inns, and many of them, too, between Conneaut and Cleveland, where the stage driver and his load could wet their whistles for three cents each or at 25 cents per gallon from Simon pure, unadulterated stuff made from corn and rye.

The traveler generally received hospitable entertainment at these taverns. A meal or a night’s lodging cost 15 cents, and one enterprising fellow said he was going to build a “condition” on his tavern so he could treat strangers in a more “hostile” manner.

From 1825 to 1850 Conneaut had her share of the marine business of the lakes. Prior to the day of railroads its harbor was considerable importance, not only to its inhabitants and others in that vicinity. But to inhabitants and others in that vicinity, but to the inhabitants of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Saegertown and Meadeville, Pa.

As heretofore mentioned, the valuable timer so mercilessly cut down to be cleared out of the way, throughout this region by the pioneer, only found a market in the condensed for of black salts, which, delivered at Conneaut Harbor, would fetch the money to pay the twenty-five cents postage stamp on a letter and twenty-five cents per yard for cotton to make a shirt.

Conneaut, like most other lake ports, had a rather slow growth from this time on up to the day of railroads. The building of the Lake Shore Railroad gave it something of an impetus, but nothing compared with the one which came in 1883, when the Nickel Plate located at Conneaut its railroad shops. Then everything moved at a lively gait. A real estate and building boom was created, which had more than doubled its population in the past six years. It now has fine churches, school houses, hotels and residences, business blocks and elegant stores, a good town hall and a lively trade. Its people are alive to the interest and welfare of their town, and full of pluck, pride and enterprise, and I predict that they will not rest satisfied until they boom her onward to a city of no small dimensions.